[130] “Our children’s children may learn with amazement how we thought it a natural social phenomenon that men should die in their prime, leaving wives and children in terror of want; that accidents should make an army of maimed dependents; that there should not be enough houses for workers; and that epidemics should sweep away multitudes as autumn frost sweeps away summer insects.” Simon N. Patten, The New Basis of Civilization, 197. CHAPTER XXVII HOSTILE FEELING BETWEEN CLASSES CONDITIONS PRODUCING CLASS ANIMOSITY—THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE ALLAYS BITTERNESS—POSSIBLE DECREASE OF THE PRESTIGE OF WEALTH—PROBABILITY OF A MORE COMMUNAL SPIRIT IN THE USE OF WEALTH—INFLUENCE OF SETTLED RULES FOR SOCIAL OPPOSITION—IMPORTANCE OF FACE-TO-FACE DISCUSSION. Class animosity by no means increases in proportion to the separation of classes. On the contrary, where there is a definite and recognized class system which no one thinks of breaking down, a main cause of arrogance and jealousy is absent. Every one takes his position for granted and is not concerned to assert or improve it. In Spain, it is said, “you may give the inch to any peasant; he is sure to be a gentleman, and he never thinks of taking the ell.” So in an English tale, written about 1875, I find the following: “The peasantry and little people in country places like to feel the gentry far above them. They do not care to be caught up into the empyrean of an equal humanity, but enjoy the poetry of their self-abasement in the belief that their superiors are indeed their betters.” So at the South there was a kind of fellowship between the races under slavery which present conditions make more difficult. A settled inequality is the next best thing, for intercourse, to equality.